The present invention relates to an information display device for a vehicle which comprises an operational portion provided on a center console in a vehicle compartment, a display portion provided at a specified position in the vehicle compartment which is visible to a driver, and a control portion to control display of the display portion in accordance with an operation of the operational portion.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2008-242960 is known as an example to show the above-described information display device for a vehicle. The information display device for a vehicle disclosed in the above-described patent document comprises a display portion to display information regarding functions of various onboard apparatuses, such as navigation and audio, wherein contents displayed on the display portion are controlled based on signals outputted from an operational portion operated by a driver. The operational portion comprises a joystick type of pointing device, some determination switches provided around the pointing device, and shortcut switches provided at a front end portion of the operational portion.
According to the above-described information display device, by operating the pointing device when an item-selection screen (a screen to display plural selective items) is displayed on the display portion, a cursor is moved on the screen so that any one of the plural selective items can be selected through a cursor's positional matching. At this point, by pushing the corresponding determination switch, the function corresponding to the selected item can be executed.
The similar operation can be also attained by using the shortcut switches. That is, by pushing any one of the shortcut switches, a specified function corresponding to this pushed shortcut switch (such as displaying a navigation screen or tuning on an audio device) can be executed directly without conducting the above-described selection on the menu screen by means of the pointing device and the determination switches.
The shortcut switches of the above-described patent document are ones to execute a specified function directly, respectively. Therefore, the larger the number of the shortcut switches is, the more functions the shortcut switches can execute directly. Thereby, the speed of function operation can be improved properly. However, an increase of the number of the shortcut switches may deteriorate operator's recognition of correspondence between the functions and the switches, so that the operation of the switches may become difficult for beginners who do not have enough experiences, especially. Further, a larger area may be occupied by the shortcut switches, so that there is a concern that an arrangement place may be improperly limited or a layout of other components may be deteriorated.